Nielsen is trying to maintain its status as TV measurement’s currency.
Over the summer, Nielsen launched its Four-Screen Ad Deduplication tool to help buyers reduce repeat impressions on YouTube across linear TV, connected TV (CTV), desktop and mobile.
Yesterday, Roku became the second major CTV publisher to adopt Nielsen’s new ad deduplication tool for measuring its ads across linear and streaming video inventory, following YouTube this summer.
“With continued focus on comparability across screens [ahead] of launching Nielsen ONE, platforms can measure streaming and linear programming with the same metrics and methodology,” Kim Gilberti, SVP of product management at Nielsen, told AdExchanger.
Four-Screen Ad Deduplication adds a fourth screen, CTV, to the screens marketers can buy deduplicated audiences against with Nielsen.
“For the first time, we’ll be able to help advertisers understand how to optimize the totality of their media buys across screens,” said Asaf Davidov, Roku’s head of measurement.
The tool is available through Nielsen’s Total Ad Ratings (TAR) product, the data set that will be the foundation of Nielsen’s cross-platform measurement platform, Nielsen ONE, which is currently in alpha.
Nielsen’s new ad deduplication tool will be available across Nielsen ONE publishers (including Roku) when the platform launches in December 2022.
But in the meantime, Nielsen hopes that quality measurement on Roku and YouTube can help prove its viability to publishers and advertisers being courted by alternate currency providers and upstarts.
Duped … or deduped?
Nielsen needs to prove it can dedupe audiences across linear and streaming – and quickly – if it hopes to stand a chance in the TV measurement race.
YouTube and Roku make sense as starting points for Nielsen’s new measurement tool because both platforms have a strong market foothold in both live content and streaming, the main channel measurement distinction the new tool means to make.
Roku, for one, has been using Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) since 2016 (and bought its ACR data biz last year). But Roku wasn’t able to dedupe streaming from audiences across mobile, desktop and linear TV with Nielsen integrations until using its new ad deduping tool.
Any app publisher that puts its media inventory on Roku devices, in addition to their advertisers, will have access to Nielsen’s Four-Screen Ad Deduplication tool through Roku’s OneView DSP.
Shared identity
Nielsen’s new deduping tool also signifies a shift from household-level to person-level measurement for the ratings titan.
Nielsen’s loss of accreditation from the Media Rating Council for its local and national TV ratings last year spurned an industry-wide shift toward identity based on data. That’s why alternate measurement providers are gaining ground with big data sets designed to count ad exposures rather than program schedules for more consistent audience measurement irrespective of how content is delivered.
“Nielsen’s aspiration is to create one currency across all screens by equivalizing identity data,” Davidov said. “Ultimately, that’s going to become an impression-based metric.”
The challenge is connecting linear TV to advertisers’ digital buys, which are transacted and measured through an ad server. But Nielsen is able to make this connection by creating proxies for linear impressions based on calibrations between panel data and co-viewing calculations.
But ultimately, an impression-based model will be what unifies measurement, Davidov said.
Competition
The romance between Roku and Nielsen is going well so far, but Roku says it’s still keeping its options open.
Buyers are demanding optionality and alternate providers, Davidov said. Roku is in talks with the demand side about which vendors they prefer for specific types of measurement.
Comscore, he added, has been “cornering the market” on local TV measurement, putting it on Roku’s radar for currency providers.
“We’re excited to be diversifying our measurement slate,” he added. “We’re talking to many providers, and making significant headway.”
